Sleep, Sleep, beauty bright
Dreaming o'er the joys of night.
Sleep, Sleep: in they sleep
Little sorrows sit & weep.

Sweet Babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace
Secret joys & secret smiles
Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feel
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek & o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart does rest.

O, the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep.
When thy little heart does wake,
Then the dreadful lightnings break.

From thy cheek & from thy eye
O'er the youthful harvests nigh
Infant wiles & infant smiles
Heaven & Earth of peace beguiles.

Labels: children, poetry, writing

After a brief hiatus, I'm going to try and revive my blogging. I've enjoyed it enormously in the past and appreciate the words of blog friends while I've been gone. And let me add just just a brief note by way of explanation.

I had been enjoying the campaign enormously in that it was a rare time of actual choices, not merely one party hack versus another, or at least so it seemed. I began the primary season optimistic about Obama running and possibly winning. As time went on, some of his statements and actions nibbled at the edges of my enthusiasm, however, and I also began to be disturbed by what seemed like endorsement morphing into idolatry in nearly all media coverage. Since most of what we voters know comes from what journalists tell us, we must rely on thorough and in-depth reporting, but electronic and print journalists alike failed to ask questions of or about him, let alone probe as hard as they probed McCain or Clinton or Palin. As a result, I wrote what I intended as questions - about him, his positions and, particularly, the moral center that is so pivotal to his campaign and himself. Quite evidently, however, I did not convey what I thought I thought, nor did I say what I meant to say. I can only blame inelegance and inadequacy as a writer, demonstrating again, I suppose, that many bloggers are not professional writers or, at the least, that Yours Truly is not. In any case, I was literally stunned into silence by the intensity and personal negativity of some reactions to what I wrote. All else aside, I very much hope that Obama is every bit the leader we need and want. And I hope that he galvanizes Americans' hopes and energies, and proves to be one of our smartest, most statesmanlike and courageous presidents.

Labels: 2008 election, blogs (mine), reflections, writing

I would be glad to make a stink about misleading headlines about Obama, not just about McCain, if there were any that I've seen. The headlines are complimentary and generous about him. That may be fallacious, too, but it's not as annoying. I don't agree with McCain and Palin on most issues but until we walk into the voting booth and pull the levers, we haven't actually made a decision. The press (print or otherwise) shouldn't be controlling my opinion of the candidates - the candidates should be doing that - yet every day this keeps happening.

Here are the top "Latest News" headlines on CNN's front page this afternoon.


That ticker headline clearly implies that someone on the McCain/Palin team, probably someone not very important since they're not named but referred to as an aide, derided Palin's abilities to run a company and, by extension, the country.

So you click on the Ticker and see the article headline that says "Fiorina: Palin, McCain not qualified to run company" so now you're figuring that someone important thinks little of McCain or Palin as far as their qualifications for high office. But it turns out that the person speaking is Carly Fiorina, the former successful CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and that she's not an aide at all but the chair of a McCain committee. So you read the article:



And it turns out that Fiorina said something altogether different from what the Ticker or the article headline said or implied. Fiorina actually said that none of the candidates could run a company, none of them (neither Obama nor Biden nor McCain nor Palin) but not because they're incompetent, no, because none has any business experience. And she also says that business experience isn't necessarily relevant or germane. All those words and disinformation for that unsurprising - and not negative - assessment.

The "ticker" could have stated that "Obama couldn't run company" just as accurately and just as misleadingly. Or Biden or McCain. Why did it single out Palin when that wasn't what Fiorina said?

ENOUGH! The press should let us decide what we think about what Obama and McCain propose to do and/or not do if they become president.

It's utterly ridiculous that it's so difficult to find out what the candidates for the highest offices in our government really say or think without being pointed away from them. The whole point of headlines is to alert readers or viewers to what we might want to read or view, not to mislead and skew us away from facts and statements that might help us make reasoned and informed decisions.

Labels: 2008 election, anger, writing

I'm not sure why it's "the" American teenager in the title and not "an" American teenager and heaven knows none of these kids bear much resemblance to any teenagers I've ever known or know now aside from their relentless self-absorption. Whatever, I got hooked watching The Secret Life of the American Teenager because of Molly Ringwald and couldn't not watch after that. It had its season finale last night and just as confused about what I think of it as I was at the beginning. I know I like Ashley best (she's the imperfect daughter and is played by Olivia Hussey's daughter, India Eisley) and Molly Ringwald's a close second. Everyone else is almost unbearably breathily emotional, a description that doesn't make much sense unless you've seen the show. There are plenty of big issues (pregnancy, divorce, religion, intolerance, emotional and physical abuse, handicaps, just to name a few) and every episode touched on almost all of them just a tad manipulatively and casually, to the point where sometimes I had to scream and stop watching or skip ahead. Here's the basic story outline:

15-year-old gets carelessly pregnant, doesn't even like the guy let alone want to be his girlfriend or wife or the mother of his child

same girl meets really nice guy soon after discovering she's preggers and they realize they're each other's soulmates even though . . . .

same girl's two supposedly best friends spill the beans and pretty soon everyone knows that goodie-two-shoes isn't so pure after all

meanwhile back at the ranch (just kidding) the putative father is a rotten guy who'll twist and turn every way he can to get girls to, er, play with him

but then we learn that his parents were wastes of space and he was abused so it's really all so sad and understandable

except that his main squeeze (literally, in this case) is the school slut who we would hate except that she's also brilliant even though her father has been absent for 16 years (yes, all her life)

but since she wants to be in charge of her life she tracks him down and finds out he's the town's D.A. and when she confronts him he decides he want to get involved in her life now and suddenly he's the only parental unit in the whole show who acts like one

There are a bazillion other things going on. Like the actor who played Smallville's Clark Kent's father (John Schneider) plays the father of the "Christian good girl" which is just too recent and the roles are too similar so every show I had to remind myself that we're not in Kansas any more. And Grace, the aforementioned "Christian good girl," is ridiculously stereotypical, down to and including being blonde and sticky sweet and about to fall hooklineandsinker for the 15-year-old's bad-guy-father-to-be, of course. And there's a black girlfriend and a Latina slutty girl and all the rest. But it's somehow hard to resist despite way too many coincidences, juxtapositions, convenient overlaps, etc., and a tremendously unpleasant smug self-righteous attitude about all those platitudes. And yet . . .

Labels: questions, tv, writing

Just in case there wasn't enough craziness afoot in the land already, there's a report in some NY papers today that Gov. Patterson is scolding McCain and Palin for [subtly] injecting race into the campaign by deriding Obama's work as a "community organizer." Patterson says they engaged in "racial coding" when Palin mentioned Obama's community organizing. What she said, however, was that if her time as governor is inadequate experience, then how adequate is his stint as a community organizer. Since that's his main work experience, the comparison and question seem fair.

Some community organizers do in fact do wonderful and helpful work. They are many things to many people: basketball and swim coaches, after-school activities coordinators, housing assistants, labor organizers, etc., etc. Some community organizers deliberately hire into (a/k/a infiltrate) offices and organizations in order to work from within to bring changes they think are important. Patterson's remarks show that either he does not realize, or he is overlooking, the reality that "community organizer" is the name for people who work in communities, sometimes manipulatively, in order to change a social order they think is wrong. People don't think anything racist when they hear the phrase, even if they don't like the work - it's the manipulation they don't like not their complexions. "Community organizing" is not, per se, derisive or racist but it may not require executive ability so much as compassion and energy.

Labels: 2008 election, reflections, writing

Obama "understands better than his supporters that it is not a politician's enemies who lose elections, but his friends."

"Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics."

Both sentences are from an article by Nick Cohen in the U.K.'s Guardian/Observer (by the way, when did they become part of each other??) that hits several nails on the head all at once (h/t duff and nonsense). The article provides insights that cannot help but help in the 50+ days ahead in terms of understanding the ups, downs and utter madness that is going on. Both Obama and McCain vowed to stay away from nastiness but I guess no one can hold onto that idea for long with how much is at stake. It's really too bad but common wisdom is that angry and nasty is more effective than calmly discussing issues.

Labels: 2008 election, reflections, writing

Alan Sullivan is never inarticulate but the strength of his feeling in this post is stunning. I hope he won't mind my quoting his final two paragraphs. If you don't know him, I should add that Alan is not even remotely part of the so-called base one might expect.

The cultural contrasts of Obama and McCain are stark enough, but those of Palin and Obama are even more revealing, because these two are contemporaries: their clash will define America in the Twenty-First Century, while Biden and McCain are figures from a receding past. From this point on, it will really be Palin versus Obama. And she will win, because she is a formed and grounded grownup, while Obama is only a character in his own memoir.

I am so glad I have lived to see this moment in the nation’s history. For the last few years I feared that America was losing its heart, and its way. Now I have hope again, thanks one gutsy old fighter pilot, and a moose-hunting gal from Wasilla.

Which goes a bit of the way toward explaining why so many writers and so-called pundits have been focusing on Obama vs Palin. But read the whole thing, enjoy and ponder.

Labels: 2008 election, politics, writing

"....[I]f Palin holds her own against Biden, as she is fully capable of doing? McCain will then have succeeded in combining with his own huge advantage in experience and judgment, a politician of great promise in his vice presidential slot who will make Joe Biden look like a tiresome relic. McCain's willingness to take a chance on Palin could turn what looked, after Obama's impressive speech Thursday night in Denver, like a long two months for Republicans and conservatives, into a campaign of excitement and--dare we say it?--hope, which will culminate on November 4 in victory." (from Bill Kristol's "Let Palin be Palin" in today's Weekly Standard)

Labels: 2008 election, reflections, writing

A Reuters article quotes Obama's campaign spokesperson Bill Burton as saying "Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency" which gives rise to two questions and a quibble:

1. McCain hasn't put Palin in the job that's "a heartbeat away from the presidency" since votes won't be cast for over two months - he's proposed her for the nomination for candidacy for the job (actually, neither of them is officially a candidate until the convention next week says so, but that's another quibble, isn't it?). Is Obama unwittingly conceding? There are always all those undercurrent rumors about democrats' drive to fail; maybe this is freudian-slippery proof of them.

2. It's a grammatical quibble but it's not the town that has zero foreign policy experience. Burton needs to keep on top of stuff like participial clauses so people don't start thinking his boss isn't quite the blindingly eloquent wordsmith after all.

3. It is true that Palin has "zero foreign policy experience." On the other hand, Obama has zero foreign policy experience, too, so it seems awfully risky for him to talk about Palin's inexperience especially considering that he's the one at the top of the ticket and she's second. It's most unwise for him to alert people to his own shortcomings in that regard and, more or less, to point voters to the realization that both his opponent's v.p. candidate and he have approximately the same number of years of job experience (14), his in service (organizer, laywer, state legislator, senator) and hers in management (city council member, mayor, ethics committee chair, governor).

And to think I was concerned that the campaign was going to be boring.

Labels: 2008 election, writing

I've been listening to one of Joan Anderson's books in my car.  (Cds are a pleasant alternative to music or talk, by the way though that's a subject for another day.) I'm not sure what I think.  She's got some wonderful ideas but also a tone of smugness that's annoying and alarming.  Some of what she suggests is undoubtedly useful and I've even done a fair number of the exercises and processes on my own.  But you get the feeling that she's saying if women would isolate themselves and discover their own needs then everything else would fall into place.  I don't mean to challenge her but other people are involved in people's lives and we cannot control them at all.  Sometimes they don't respond as we'd like, even if we're entirely centered and calm.  Obviously the effect of someone being non-responsive or antagonistic is very different if one's own center is calm and clear, but that doesn't seem quite what she's saying.  Then again, maybe I'm just resisting.  I must say spending a weekend, month or year in a cottage on Cape Cod sounds like heaven although few of us have the financial wherewithal.  Have any rare readers experienced her books/workshops and, if so, what do you think?

Labels: books, women, writing

Read Maureen Dowd's column on all this. It's not just sarcastic but funny (no surprise there) and insightful.

Both Edwardses (is that the plural?) have remarked that the source for the information about his affair is a lying scumbag piece of tabloid paper. They imply and pretty much state that therefore no one should regard what they say as true. Except that what they said about this was true. What am I missing?

Labels: 2008 election, people, reflections, writing

Interesting, thoughtful and fairly serious interview with David Thewlis here.  Love his quote of Billy Bragg's retake on a Philip Larkin "thing about the enemy of the artist [being] the pram in the hall."

His view of that was he didn't believe it at all. He's got several children and loves it and finds it inspiring. He gave me a poem he wrote that was a pastiche of Larkin's "They f*** you up, your mum and dad". He changed it to "They tuck you up, your mum and dad" and rewrote every line to make it a positive, loving, parental poem. It was a beautiful thing.

He and Billy Bragg are right: you can make/take time to be both an artist and a parent.

Labels: good ideas, good people, tv, writing

From Small World Reads (via Semicolon) I learned that Joanna at Lost in a Good Story is hosting The New Classics Challenge and it sounds wonderful! It's all based on Entertainment Weekly's list of new classics - which is an odd list to say the least - but it's all in good fun and who can argue with picking bunches of books to read and talk/write about, right?!

The Rules:

1. Copy the list, post it and bold the titles that you have already read.
   
2. Choose at least 6 other books from the list; read and review them between 8/1/2008 and 1/31/2009.
   
3. Go back to Lost in a Good Story and post links to your reviews.
   
4. In January 2009, cast your vote for which one of the 100 books on the list is your favorite (and write a post on why). The winning book will be sent to a lucky winner chosen by the scientific method favored here in the blogosphere, i.e. names in a hat.
   
5. Have fun! :-)

The List
Bolded titles I've already read; I've asterisked ones I thought were especially good.
Orange titles are on my list for the Challenge.
1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
R4. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
*41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
*47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
*55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
*57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
R65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
*88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Hope some of my own rare readers (as Alan would say) will join me.

Labels: blogs (mine), blogs (others'), books, reading, writing

Two discoveries:
-Beatrix Potter means more to the general public than I thought
and
-Google has a soul or at least whoever attends to their daily logo does.

Google honored her with this charming logo yesterday, her 166th.

Labels: fun, good people, writing

Andrew Sullivan's prose always soothes my reading nerves frayed from reading too much "clever" reportage that's convoluted and neither particularly clever nor insightful and often misleading or packed with messages from an agenda.  So now I feel much better about the 11/4/08 election.  In an article in today's London Times, he says the differences between GWB, McCain and Obama are really a "question of presidential temperament" more than policy or anything they might actually do.

There is little doubt that a President McCain would have more hawkish instincts, would be quicker on the trigger than the cool, conciliatory Obama. However, Obama’s readiness to use military force in Pakistan and commitment to the Afghan war does not bespeak a Jimmy Carter-style liberalism either.

They're both too political and disingenuous for my taste but I suppose that's an inevitable part of the make-up of a person who's willing to run for the office.  We aren't marrying the guy after all.

Labels: 2008 election, optimism, reflections, writing

There's a discussion of yesterday morning's press conference over at The Texas Scribbler. Aside from what was said, which was interesting - even occasionally inspiring - and can/should be read in its entirety here, TTS was struck by the difference between the actual transcript and how people have reacted to what Bush said. (I especially loved his comment that "politics is just choking good sense." I really wonder what things would be like if he were able to effectuate the ideas he has instead of being blocked at every turn. Couldn't be much worse, could it?)

This is something I have noticed many times during Bush's tenure. His actual words are often smart and his exchanges with reporters are often chatty and friendly, but the reports after the fact talk only about gaffs and tension.

To that point, I watched a Rose Garden press conference a while ago. For over an hour I saw several verbal, smart, relaxed and interesting people talk with Bush who was also verbal, smart, relaxed and interesting. I had meant to have it on as background to my knitting but ended up watching intently because there were so many engaging expressions on everyones' faces during the conversations between the reporters and the President. Plus, I was fascinated to observe that they were in fact conversing, not attacking at all. Imagine my astonishment the next day when I read newspaper and blog reports about what a smirky nasty business it had all been. I couldn't figure out what they were talking about and even wondered fleetingly if there had been two press conferences that day covering the same exact subjects. After all, I'd seen and heard it myself and no one, not one person there, either reporter or chief executive, smirked or put anyone down or said anything stupid or disparaging. Quite thoroughly the contrary.

As a result, I concluded that (a) BDS is a far more interfering block than rose-colored glasses and (b) many media presenters and bloggers either have BDS or want to put things in terrible light even if it distorts what actually occurred.

Maybe the editors and executives who decide what will appear and be heard cannot cope with the fact that nothing has shaken Bush one bit from his total belief in liberty and his trust in individuals' strength and intelligence.

Labels: gwb, people, reflections, writing

Apparently Acres of Books in Los Angeles is relocating, to the dismay of many including the ever-brilliant and wonderful Ray Bradbury. Their website doesn't mention it but Laura wrote about it here and Bradbury's visit adds credence. I hope independent bookstores (and other businesses) manage to hang on over the next six-to-eighteen months while the economy does its tremulous little dance because things will right themselves economically even if we have some rough times to go through first. They usually do but unfortunately some cannot hang on. The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC is famous for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is 30 years in existence, in large part because of the foresightedness of its proprietor in purchasing the store and land way back when it was (somewhat) affordable. People do read and will continue to read, nay-sayers to the contrary notwithstanding.

Labels: books, optimism, writing

It all began when I saw edog's list. I'm a tad competitive about some things (understatement) so I had to check and see how I measured up. I copied the list into Excel and bolded the ones I'd read and added them up, but then I noticed that the last one was numbered 100 in text but was on the 98th line. Upon further investigation, I discovered that #44 and #51 were missing entirely so I tried edog's code thinking maybe the printed version had swallowed something but no. I went to The Big Read website sure they'd have the original list but found nothing even remotedly like this. (They've got their books for this summer's recommendations and all kinds of intellectualizing gobbledeegook about Americans and reading but no 100s.) I tried all manner of internet searches and found all manner of lists of books but none were these. Finally I returned to edog and saw he said he'd gotten the list from "Sheila" so after a bit of sleuthing on his site I found her link (Sherri Blossoms) but her list was missing 44 and 51, too. So I clicked her from whence (Moonrat) but again they were missing. I kept going back and back and back . . . six times in all until eventually I got to halo4's list which, blessedly, included the two books (wonder what happened? was it a simple case of Blogsphere Telephone?). In the end, here we are. See rules at the end of the post.

THE LIST - of which waaayyyyy too many are collections, children's and/or school books and/or science fiction. Since this list is unobtainable except via other blogs, I do not know but am curious as to who compiled it and with what criteria in mind. It seems like a mix of "important" books and best sellers and "pc" and "favorites" from its compiler(s). Meme and list writers should include their source. Anyway, be that as it may . . . .

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I read one so I get 1/6 of a point)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 *Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I gave myself 1/2 a point)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 *Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 *War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (hated it as a kid, like it now)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (didn't understand it at 15, love it now)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 **Persuasion - Jane Austen (Anne Elliott is one of my favorite people in the world)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (started it, didn't like it)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (started it, didn't like it)
40 *Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (marvelous idea but not crazy about the book)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (a good friend adores this)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 *Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (does watching the movie count?)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (hated the movie, sorry)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (no way)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (?)
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (Dirk Bogarde made it come alive)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (you must be kidding)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (that's SIR Rushdie to you)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 *The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson (marvelous)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (MUST read this)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (loathed it, have major issues with her)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 *A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (never even heard of this)
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (another collection; sheesh)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (ugh; cute until you're 11)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (I hate anthropomorphizing)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (I've read others of his though)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 *Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (love lots of his stories)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (hated the musical too; so sue me)

So bottom line is I've read lots of them (72-4 depending on how you count) although I feel I should have read them all but I guess no one can be expected to have read every book in the world. Plus, the older I get the more readily I put aside a book that I don't like after 50 or 100 pages.

THE RULES : such as they are:
   (1) bold titles you've read,
   (2) italicize those you intend to read,
   (3)(a) underline those you liked
* (3)(b) tag those you adore with an asterisk, and
   (4) strike out those you didn't like.

Labels: about me, blogs (others'), books, writing

Nifty graphics and comments on "eyeball jazz" at Color Addict (here and here).

Part one of two on Michelle Obama in, of all places, the U.K.'s Daily Mail, not exactly renowned for its hard-hitting or brilliant journalism. Nevertheless, it is worth reading.

Amusing photo spread on celebs and their non-human companions.

Wonderful shoes, than which nothing else needs to be said. I swear I want a pair. I wonder what that means about me?

How car engines work. In case you think this item wandered over from another blog, it's here because my daughter and I were talking about pistons and carburetors and how gas and air and oil make a car go . . . and I finally remembered to look it up. This page has a very cool (heh) diagram, too. (Yes, Virginia, air is necessary.)

Via Laura, a list of ten concerns about Obama. I think some are a bit contrived but I hope we will all ponder both McCain and Obama in depth since for once we have two people whose views differ considerably.

And also via Laura, a charming stroll at Disneyland. I love that she takes such regular and natural advantage of living nearby. Love it for her sake, of course, and much more selfishly for my own.

Good question and very important in light of tornadoes and hurricanes, et al, let alone anything more nefarious.

Labels: blogs (others'), reflections, writing

I usually quite like these things. They're silly and a bit superficial but lend a tiny sliver of a peek at a third dimension for people I otherwise know very little about. And I am exceedingly curious about what makes people tick.

The rules:
1. Post the rules at the beginning.
2. Answer the questions only about yourself.
3. At the end of the post, tag five people and post their names, then go to their blogs and leave them a comment so they know they’ve been tagged. Ask them to read the sender's blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What were you doing five years ago?
June 2003 — Preparing for my daughter's wedding! She amazed me and touched me by asking me to be her matron of honor (thereby also saving herself the difficulty of selecting one of her friends or sisters-in-law, but hey). It was a lovely celebration of two people's clear and apparently affection and love for each other. A child's wedding is an opportunity to share excitement and joy with her or him and with one's extended family and with a new family as well. June of 2003 was a lovely month. And the birth of her daughter the following July in turn began an era of more frequent contact, greater understanding and even closeness among us all, for which I am extremely grateful. How nice to remember.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1. Reserve room for Friday night because the local power company is shutting off power for eight hours for improvements before the height (heat?) of the summer.

2. Finish French reading for class on Wednesday and prepare answers to the questions provided by the instructor by way of review and homework.

3. Make significant progress on necklace I'm making for my friend for her birthday on Saturday - there are really only 3 nights to work on it what with Friday's power shutdown.

4. Continue tests and make good notations about new software package at work so I can answer intelligently at our meetings tomorrow and Friday.

5. Worry about how to find someone to repair my front and back porches so I can hire someone to do the work, soon.

What are five snacks you enjoy?
1. Terra's sweet potato and vegetable chips
2. Pepperidge Farm's Milano cookies
3. steamed milk and froth with a little coffee
4. ice cream
5. almost any fruit

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1. Pay off all my and my childrens’ debts and set up college funds for my grandchildren so they wouldn't have to worry about college or graduate school

2. Buy an estate on the shore in Maine and another on the shore near Carmel (CA) - two equally beautiful and different pieces of paradise on earth.

3. Take family and friends on a ship to the Galapogos Islands, covering their living expenses so we could be gone for three or four weeks.

4. Spend one month in France and one month traveling, every year.

5. Save and carefully invest the rest with the help of the best financial adviser I could find so that the money makes money and we'd all be set for the rest of our lives. What fun it would be to leave significant money presents for people now and then.

What are five of your bad habits?

1. Procrastinate. A lot.

2. Make plans to do bigger things than I really can accomplish.

3. Spread out what I'm doing all over the place even though I hate mess.

4. Avoiding people and things that make me uncomfortable even though I know perfectly well that facing them would be all right if I just would face them.

5. Eat out too much because I don't take the time to go to the store and buy good ingredients so I can cook good-ingredient food even though I like how I feel when I do and like how it tastes.

What are five places where you have lived?
1. Greenwich Village - great place to grow up, a small town in an intellectual atmosphere
2. Riverdale, the Bronx - nice but neither city nor suburb
3. Guilford, Vermont - fantastic countryside
4. Dutchess County, New York - strong communities, very pleasant
5. Northampton, Massachusetts - happenin' college town

What are five jobs you’ve had?
1. clerk at penny candy store in Greenwich Village during high school
2. housekeeper at seaside resort on Long Island, one summer during college
3. waitress
4. assistant administrator to college dean
5. assistant book store manager (if only it paid real wages . . . )
6. graphic designer
7. software and document specialist
8. jewelry maker and (eventually) designer
9. mother and grandmother!!
Oops - did you say "5"??

Five people I tag:
1. Missy
2. Color Addict
3. Barb - her post-tag post
4. Morgan Freeberg - his post-tag post
5. Dad - his post-tag post

Labels: about me, blogs (mine), blogs (others'), writing